What Makes You Different?

Friday, October 9th, 2015

A first impression is crucially important. People are judging us the whole time—from the minute you walk out the front door in the morning, to the minute you go to bed at night. People look at your clothing, how you shake hands. They look at every aspect of your communication and make decisions, second by second, on whether they buy you or don’t buy you. Regardless of what business you are in, we are all in sales.

The reason we are all in sales is every time we have an idea that we show someone, people don’t just listen to the idea, but they look at the person broadcasting the idea. They ask themselves: Do I like this person? Do I trust them? In other words, do I buy them?

If you can’t explain to someone in their language why they should want your product, service or idea, they won’t buy it, no matter how great it is. That is why we have to understand that we are all in sales.

To learn how to do it, we can follow the acronym LWAR. Listening and Watching first, and Adapting and Reacting second. You look at someone and ask yourself: If I were that person now, what would I want to hear? What would be troubling me? What would be my pain point? Where would I get excited if I were that person? And then all you have to do—because we are all good observers—is, very quickly, you have to change the way you sell your product or service to match what you guess are the needs of that person in front of you.

It is only when you start to adapt your message to suit the person in front of you that you actually get to make headway.

Summing-up: That is the real skill—understanding how to get a message across and to make sure it actually counts. Every single time you have to offer a differentiator. What makes you different?